HP Pavilion dv5130us with a Verizon Novatel V620 Card

Tom789

I just purchased two Verizon PC cards. I’ll give the configurations and information for both.

First off we live outside Ann Arbor, Michigan. We are too far out for both cable and DSL service. I’ve tried ISDN and had the system working for a while, but we had a major power failure along with surges and spikes which messed everything up. I tried to get that working again, but gave up on it when I learned about EV-DO.

My system
HP Pavilion dv5130us
PC card: Novatel V620
With a booster antenna

Installation was straight forward and I had no problem getting the notebook to work with the card. Without the booster antenna, I am getting speeds of about 600 Kilobits/sec using the frontier net speed test. One thing that greatly helped was at this forum, I found out which tower my PC was really talking to (there are three within sight). By moving my antenna from facing north to facing west, my speeds went from 500 Kilobits/sec to 800 Kilobits and I am now getting bursts of 1.3 Meg. You will notice that I was actually getting lower speeds with the antenna facing the wrong direction than with no antenna at all. What can I say, those are the numbers.

Concerning my PC, I purchased a Wireless Microsoft Notebook Mouse to work with it. Loved the ergonomics, but with it plugged in, the screen saver wouldn’t engage. So I bought a Logitech V200 Mouse, no problems now.

I networked my notebook to my desktop (Pavilion 7855) using a crossover cable and XP’s networking software. The only problem I had was that I had to assign the DNS address for my desktop’s Ethernet card. This was so my desktop could access the internet via the V620 card. I used the “nslookup” command to find the address for Verizon's DNS server.

Big secret time, don't tell anyone. I occasionally download a legal torrent using the Azureus software. I tend to run them (normally just one 180 megabyte file) late at night. Originally, I tried Sprint which has a reputation for being kinder in these matters. I didn't know it at the time, Sprint was just our regular cellular company. But their system doesn't reach out quite as far as Verizon's. When I spoke with Verizon's salesman, I told him that this card was going to be my primary internet connection. I was told it was unlimited and no problem. After reading posts in this forum, I've talked to at least three people at Verizon Wireless. They have all told me that, what I have is unlimited and the only way I would be disconnected is if I didn't pay my bill. My impression is that (after speaking to them and reading the contract), if you really abuse your privileges in a high volume (busy) area, there is a chance that you could be disconnected. I don't know if one torrent a night (or less) is abuse (in their eyes) or not, but I guess I am going to find out.

I do get spontaneous crashes on my notebook when running the Azureus software. They tend to happen when the file is downloading at an unusually high rate, in excess of 35 Kilobytes/sec. I am now trying to limit my download speed to 25. Doesn't much matter to me, I'll be sleeping and 25 should work as well as 35.

I'll talk about my nephew's system, a Toshiba Satellite (750 processor) with a Verizon 5740 card in another post. I'm still having problems with it and we bought it two weeks before my system.

Tom

Tom789 · Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 9:27 pm Post subject:

I had some problems with my HP dv5130us. Spontaneous crashes, they were happening two to five times a day. After examing my logs and doing a bit of research on the internet, thankfully I get the ZDnet bulletins, it became obvious that it was probably a bug in the latest Microsoft update. Well the Microsoft patch for the patch came out today and I haven't had any crashes for the last eight hours, since I installed the update. I've been pounding on my machine, pretty hard, trying to cause a failure, but everything has been running perfectly. So, crossing my fingers, it looks like my problems are solved. Just thought I would post this, in case anyone is having similar problems.

Tom